The most valuable course I took in college was philosophy of language, commonly called "semantics," the study of the use of language. The letter writers, lawyers, hunters, and right-wingers who feel that the 2nd Amendment supports citizens having the right to bear guns make a simple semantic error.

The reporting of the Supreme Court's 2nd Amendment decision in the Friday Chicago Tribune included a troubling quote from our own David Pope. His statement accused the court's majority of enabling "gangbangers" to ravage our community, when, in fact, the minority justices were the ones siding with the "bad people."

In the 1983-1985 timeframe, I served as chair of the Oak Park Citizens Committee for Handgun Control, the citizens group which successfully petitioned the village board to enact Oak Park's handgun ban in April of 1984.

We've just been told that in order to sustain the parking ticket budget we must raise meter rates. Otherwise, we'll not "balance" the Oak Park Parking Mafia budget. Yes, "Mafia." Every Oak Parker knows our parking situation is a farce-outrageous and offensive to all who live and work here.

We seem to keep having developers who are proposing taking current public parking areas and building large condo/retail buildings. While each of those buildings will have hundreds of parking spaces, wouldn't each new condo owner need those spaces for their cars?